


King of Salt Beside the Sea

by Villainyandgoodcheekbones



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: F/M, Fix-It, For a certain value of fixed, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-01
Updated: 2013-09-01
Packaged: 2017-12-25 06:18:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/949655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Villainyandgoodcheekbones/pseuds/Villainyandgoodcheekbones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Someone is screaming, and the water is cold, and they are, any minute now, going to die. So they could clasp hands, run the rabbit down and die, feeling nothing but the memory.<br/>Or they could fight.</p><p>Alternately:</p><p>Surviving is easy. It's what comes after that's hard.</p>
            </blockquote>





	King of Salt Beside the Sea

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from Yehuda Amichai's "El Male Rachamim ('God full of mercy')"

 

> _I, who plucked flowers on the mountain,_   
>  _Who gazed out over all of the valleys,_   
>  _I, who brought the corpses down from the hilltops,_   
>  _I can tell you that the world is void of mercy._
> 
> _I, who was the king of salt beside the sea,_   
>  _Who stood against my will before my window,_   
>  _Who counted the footsteps of angels,_   
>  _Whose heart lifted weights of anguish_   
>  _In dreadful contests[...]_
> 
> _-Yehuda Amichai "El Male Rachamim ('God full of mercy')"_

Cherniy is screaming, and the water is cold, and they are, any minute now, going to die.

So they have a choice.

They could reach out, clasp hands across the conn pod, and chase the rabbit down as far as it’ll go, and die on their wedding day, or his 18th birthday, or the first day they killed a Kaiju, Cherniy still whole and still home. They could do that,  and die thinking only of how they laughed, because the dress uniforms they were given didn’t fit, and Nova gave them two-shot salute with their plasma cannon, singing loudly and wildly off-key in Pashto the whole time; of the yellow dress she was wearing when she took him out, just turned eighteen, to get properly drunk, and passed every drink anyone bought her to him, and he was bright red the whole night; of an engineer (Kirya, as always, the only one who could ever reach high enough) rapping his two knuckles against the cross-and-skull painted onto their armor at Aleksis’s questioning look, saying “It means God be with you, Kaidanovsky. Kill them all.”

They could do that, and never feel the water close up over their heads.

So  water is burning in her eyes,  her nose down her throat, and she starts to turn , and chase the rabbit, run it down.

Which is when the blast shields come down.

Cherniy is heavy, and Cherniy is old, the last of his kind,  Cherniy is patched and scarred and repaired many times over. Cherniy is old, with heavy shoulders and heavy fists and a nuclear reactor plant in his skull. Cherniy  is old enough to know better.

The protocol in the event of critical reactor failure is this:

Given a scenario in which there is sufficient damage such that the main reactor enters critical failure, it is unlikely that  Russian jaeger Cherno Alpha will be salvageable in substantial quantities. This, damage, however, may occur mid-fight, and the miracle mile must be held.

At close enough range, a reactor meltdown will kill a Kaiju.

A jaeger needs its pilots to move. As such, measures are to  be taken such that the pilots survive long enough to get in close.

In the event of critical reactor failure, the main conn pod can be isolated with lead-lined blast shields descending automatically, as triggered by rising core temperature and radiation levels. As this cuts off visibility, instrument detection will remain online, as will the neural interface. All other internal power supply will be cut.

So the lights go out, and Cherniy hits bottom, back to the bottom of the Kwai Chung-Tsing Yi basin and Sashsa/Aleksis screams  as impact hurls her/him back, cracking ribs, and neither of them knows whose ribs they are, or who’s screaming. They’re too deep in the Drift. So the reactor blows, explosion ripping  through all around them and they are going to die any minute, even inside all these lead-lined walls.

But then the water isn’t rising anymore. But they’re screaming,  and one of them gasps, shaking in the dark, so there must be air, still.

So they could clasp hands, run the rabbit down and die, feeling nothing but the memory.

Or they could fight.

And Aleksis is already moving, ripping out cables, and he says “We are going to die anyway, inside of a month, of radiation poisoning.” He runs his hands softly over a coolant pipe, one last apology, before jerking it free. Cherniy is not like other Jaegers. You pilot from the chest, the heart, and so you  climb up, under one arm, then across and up through the ribs; the main hatch is at their feet. The pipe comes away with a shrieking, metallic groan.

Sasha flinches, because it hurts, and scoffs (and that hurts, too; so it was her ribs, then). “A month? You seen the water?” It’s up to their necks, still churning, and the swirls are white with foam, but every drop is stained Kaiju blue. “We won’t even make it  to shore.”

“Make it farther than you” he grunts, wedging one end under the hatch’s main release lever, and pulling .  The metal shrieks again, muffled underwater, and his shoulders are screaming as he wrenches at the pipe. Sasha can feel them. She slides one hand over the straining muscle and holds, shaking her head.

“No, you won’t.” she promises. “I will drag you down with my dying breath if that’s what it’s takes.” When she lets go, there’s something like relief written across his face. One more pull, she knows, and the hatch will open, and everything on the other side will come pouring in, water in her eyes and nose and throat and–

Sasha winds a dangling cable around her  hand, tugs to make sure it’ll hold. “Do it.”  Her eyes are squeezed tightly shut, head bowed,  straining for whatever threads of connection remain to tell Cherniy that they are sorry, they are so sorry, and if they can, if they survive this, they will come back. It takes exactly three seconds and ten thousand years to swing the hatch open. The the water hits like a fist to the gut.

The last ladder up is now across, and they pull themselves hand over hand, faces turned up the inch of air of above them. They’re kissing the metal with every stolen breath.

And then it’s down, in the dark, with no way of knowing how deep they are, how far to the surface, or whether they’ve done anything at all but decide to drown instead of burn, and Sasha closes her eyes. “How long” she mouths against the hull, almost laughing, “Can you hold your breath?”

“Long enough.” he says. Long enough.

They dive.

Later, Dr. Hermann Gottlieb will explain that there are no such things as miracles, that the average depth of the water in the main containment units of the Port of Hong Kong is roughly 15.5 meters; ten miles out, on the miracle mile, it almost twice as deep, approximately 30 meters. There are recorded instances of human beings diving unaided, before it was too dangerous to dive at all, but there are records of human beings diving, on only single breath,  with no fins, to depths of nearly 200 meters, including, since we seem to be focused on such trivialities, Miss Natalia Molchanova of Russia, swimming 182 meters in 2013. The numbers all fit. It is perfectly within the realm of possibility that they should have survived. He will not be taking any further questions on the matter.

Dr. Newton Geizsler, call me Newt,  will whistle through his teeth, impressed despite himself, and then return to interrupting Dr. Gottlieb with corrections to his precious numbers, since Natalia Molchanova wasn’t swimming in a Jaeger drivesuit through Kaiju blood.

Mako Mori will note that they are very brave, and she is very grateful to have met and worked with them. She wishes them a swift recovery. Raleigh Beckett will echo her sentiment, adding that he hopes to get to know them better in future.

Hercules Hansen will not be available for comment.

But all of that is later, when--

if they make it out.

Now, it is only cold, black water and praying, praying desperately that one of them can get the door open (it already is,  warped from impact and gaping just enough to let them through. Sasha presses her lips to Cherniy’s hull, because she knows  this is not an accident.). Now it is only the gasp, ripped from her throat when her head breaks the surface, only the burn in her throat as she gags and coughs, heaving up saltwater and blood. Now it is only swimming to Aleksis, and latching onto his hand so they cannot drift apart, only shivering, only moving still, legs thrashing, because they cannot stop moving yet.

“Salvage” she gasps, and Aleksis nods.

Kaiju blood is less dense than water, highly toxic, and to the right individuals, sells at 2500USD per liter. Someone will be by any minute to skim it off the water, not to mention the ones who will come crawling out for a piece of a Jaeger. They just have to wait.

So they wait.

And wait.

And wait.

\---

You’d think that you’d be able to lie down and sleep after saving the world, but you can’t, because if you do, you’ll end up seeing his face, and you can’t take it, and anyway, there is still so much work to do.

Because the Jaeger program is still up for decommission, and there’s only a few months left to work out how to deal with pensions and severances and damage compensations.Because there are riots, here and there, to be dealt with; what if they come back, and we’re not ready? Why are they keeping Drift Tech from the People, capital P? What about all that infrastructure, all that space, all those jobs? Saving the world, as it turns out,  is grey. Grey of not knowing whether or cheer or cry or even if you have it in you to cry, grey of official stamps and seals. Grey of not sleeping until you physically cannot stay awake anymore, and the grey standard-issue sheets, since you haven’t left Hong Kong still.

It’s a fog, not thick, but desperately cold, and Hercules Hansen shivers and scrubs tired hands across his face. Random pops of color shudder and burst on the insides of his eyelids. He has every intention of never opening them ever again, until–

“We’ve...got a call coming through.”

Tendo, Tendo who hasn’t left either, hair falling around his face now that the gel’s lost its hold, Tendo Choi toys anxiously with the beads on his wrist and presses his lips into a thin line.

“What?” It’s too much. “This is a secure line.” Was, anyway.

Tendo Choi lays his hands flat on the console in front of him and shrugs wearily. “You want me to patch ‘em though?”

Hercules Hansen waves one hand, might as well.

The face flickering up onscreen flashes a mouthful of gold, baring his teeth in an expression absolutely nothing like a smile.Behind his tinted glasses, Hannibal Chau rolls his eyes. “Well. It’s about goddamn time you boys picked up.Pentecost. Where is he? Need a word.”

Choi flinches, just barely. Herc Hansen squares his jaw and raises his chin. “Stacker Pentecost is dead.” and he will drag the words out if it kills him, “ This is Marshall Hercules Hansen.”

Chau’s teeth click together. “Finally bit it, huh? Well then, Marhshall Hercules Hansen, I got a question for you. You missing a set of lieutenants?” The quiet lasts for almost a full minute, getting thicker and more outraged by the second as it drags on, before Chau continues “Yeah, matched set, Russian. They yours?”

Hannibal Chau  flickers sideways like a knife, just enough  to show, in the room behind him, two cots, nestled among wires and whirring machinery. And amidst the humming, Hercules Hansen sees a shadow of white-blonde hair; the shoulder plate of a drivesuit, T-90 drab; a slack, massive hand wearing too many rings. He closes his eyes, feeling his shoulders dragged down, but he is a fixed point now. The fixed point. Hercules Hansen opens his eyes. They should go home.

“How much do you want?”

Chau frowns, his whole face puckering with disdain.

“I think, Marshall Hercules Hansen, that we have somewhat of a miscommunication here. See, Marshall,  ah, dead Russians are not exactly my stock in trade.” He flickers again, motioning over a red-dressed woman with a shaved head and a tablet, its screen full of spiking blips and lines. BP 109/78 and 107/76 and  holding,  pulse erratic, but there. “These fuckers are alive. You wanna ask me again how much I want? Marshall Hercules Hansen?”

~x~

Otach was yesterday, Otachi was just hours ago, there are 1850 beds inside Queen Elizabeth Hospital, and every one of them is full. They’ve set up cots in offices and the wider hallways, and those are full, there’s no room.

The  PPDC understands that there is no room, the PPDC understands that this is a difficult time, the PPDC is profoundly grateful for the hard work and dedication of the medical and support staff of Queen Elizabeth, the PPDC commends them for their service, and would like to remind them that Lieutenants S and A Kaidanovsky risked their lives in defense of this city, and neither is stable enough to be flown elsewhere.

The staff of Queen Elizabeth appreciates their sacrifice, naturally, but would like to remind the PPDC that Otachi did in fact make landfall. There is no room.

Miss Mako Mori, still under observation for any lingering effects of her time in the Breach would like to respectfully submit one or two observations.“Surely there’s a little more space? Just a little?” Miss Mako Mori ducks her chin and looks up through her eyelashes.

Two more beds are found.

For one whole week, they are the news; there are interviews, commentary from anyone who might have ever spoken to them, fund-raising drives, blood drives (they are, respectively, O positive and negative, and in need of transfusions; they bled for you, consider donating for them), journalists flown out to Russia for cultural op-ed segments; there are letters pouring in. They are the news, and everyone waits for Sasha and Aleksis Kaidanovsy to wake up.

But they don’t.

Wires and IV lines snake up from their arms and her hair spills loose on the pillow, a hospital gown strains over his chest, and they don’t wake up. After a week, it’s not news anymore. After two, it is no longer possible to ignore that their blood pressure is dropping, point by point, that he has had two arrhythmias already and she is barely breathing at times. After that, they are put into the same room, smaller than before. No sense wasting the extra space when they are, without a doubt, going to...

Anyone who wishes to visit is urged to do so quickly, before they...

But they don’t.

Together, her breath steadies, his pulse evens out. They’ve turned towards each other in their two beds, like they could almost be just sleeping, about to wake up and complain about how small these beds are. But they don’t wake up, for all that the blips and lines indicating that they are alive still come more regularly, for all that they’re off transfusions, blood toxicity within normal, treatable range, they’re not waking up.

They drifted for over 18 hours once. And, Herc Hansen thinks, looking down and trying not to look at the IV lines and wires, the three people in this room are the last three people left in the entire world who have ever piloted a Mark I Jaeger, and there will never be anyone else. So if they are going to...they’d want to be together. He steps forward.

It’s not easy; there’s the machines to move, the IV drip, and big as her husband is, people forget that Sasha Kaidanovsky is tall enough on her own, only a few inches shorter than Hercules Hansen, who is beginning to think that she feels much too light in his arms. He’s never seen her without her lipstick before.  It’s strangely intimate, too much so, and he winces, murmuring “Sorry, mate” as he tucks her in against her husband’s side. Might be nothing, but just as he’s leaving, Herc swears he can see Aleksis shake his head.

~x~

The lipstick isn’t a tube like he expected, more like a pencil, and Mako’s lips are slightly parted in concentration as she colours Sasha’s in red. He thinks it’s Sasha, anyway. Raleigh never could quite get them straight.

His own lips are parted, mirroring Mako, and Raleigh touches the tip of his tongue to the corner of his mouth when she does, but he’s hanging back still, hugging the doorframe, because he isn’t Mako. Not right now. He didn’t--doesn’t know them, only that they look...

He can’t think of the word. It’s not fragile, he’s not sure they could ever look fragile, and it’s not quite battered, they’re just...so still, and the roots of their hair are growing in, and it’s like...

A statue just before it’s really a statue, when it’s rock still, but carved at and chipped away and you can’t tell if the next strike is going to finally turn it into something, or just shatter it completely. But Raleigh can’t think how to say any of that, so he licks his lips when Mako does, as she’s filling in the red on Sasha’s (it is Sasha, he’s sure) and murmurs “Looks hard.”

“There’s a trick to it” she offers, waving him in.”You start at the middle, and go out.” She tucks the lipstick away,and Raleigh thinks Oh. Of course. Mako’s eyes flicker shut, and she smiles thinly. “I don’t wear it so much. But.”  The bed is barely big enough for one person, let alone two, let Aleksis, and his wife, and Mako perched on the very edge, leaning birdlike over Sasha, so Raleigh hovers half a step behind, with no idea what to do with his hands.

“My pocket.” Mako nods towards her coat, draped across the empty bed on the other side of the room. “Will you give it to him?”

“It” is a gold chain, almost as thick as one of his fingers, but oddly delicate despite that, all wrapped up in coarse, stained paper. There’s something etched into each link: a cross, three bars cradling a skull. And Aleksis’s skin is warm, but not warm enough; Raleigh’s fingers catch on two and a half weeks of stubble and rough beard while he bends to loop the chain around his neck. “Says to say ‘God be with you, Kaidanovsky’”. Mako presses his hand as he straightens up.

They still look...

And he still can’t think how to say it, but now they look just a little more like themselves.

~x~

“It’s called ‘Kaiju Meat’” The beads rattle on his wrist as the bass starts to shudder through the room. The hospital coffee tastes like shit, like hospital coffee always does, and Tendo Choi hates himself just a little, because it tastes like shit and burns his mouth, but he’s drinking it anyway because he knows the headache of not drinking it will be so much worse. He winces as it goes down, cradling the too-hot cup between his palms. It’s shaking, rippling in time to the music. “Some DJ outta Odesa; he actually got the audio of the Raythe attack off one of the chopper audio channels, somehow.”

God, the fucking coffee, it’s disgusting, and he doesn’t know when the last time he slept was. Or when the last time that worried him was. “Nobody knows how he did it, all the guys keep trying to figure it out and I keep tellin’ ‘em it’s not gonna work. Black market. Somebody knew a guy knew a girl knew this mechanic’s brother...” He snorts. “I keep expecting to hear it was you.”

This is the part when Sasha raises one dark eyebrow, lips pursed archly and tilts her face up into Aleksis’s neck, gives him this little--this nudge, and he twists his head sideways with a rumbling laugh, like ‘wouldn’t you like to know?’

But then it’s not, and Tendo sinks forward, elbows on his knees, hands locked together in front his mouth, half-drunk coffee abandoned by his feet.

Raythe’s rattling screech dissolves into  another burst of bass and drums, bringing a nurse running. She glares in the doorway, hissing “Sir,please. The music.”

His lips twitch behind his hands and he doesn’t bother to look up, just rolls his shoulders and says “Look, if you have a problem with Ukrainian Hard House, you have a problem with life.”

He looks to Sasha for confirmation, and continues. “If you have a problem with life...”

Tendo Choi almost laughs. “Well, maybe we can fix that.”

~x~

It hurts.

It hurts, and the only place it doesn’t hurt is the space between her ribs and left hip, where it is only warm.

“Lyoshka,” she murmurs, turning her cheek into his chest. “Lyoshka, get up.”

~x~

English. She must remember that she must speak English to them, this is not the time for the things she wants to say, only for the things that must be said. Later, she is going to throw back her head and scream, wordless, because there are no words for this, not in English, or in Russian, or any language anyone has ever spoken. Later she is going to scream, and drag the vowels up out of her throat until it bleeds. But now Sasha swallows, and tells them to take him home.

“He deserves better,” she says, “than to rot in Hong Kong.”

She does not know the woman’s name, and  perhaps she would not hate her on another day, would not blame her for saying “I understand, but the standard procedure to is to--”

“No!”  she snarls, lips peeling back, “You do not put him with the others, you do not take him to that place. Ten years he gave you. Ten years, you take him home.” Sasha closes her eyes and pushes the too-loose hair from her face, head bowed.

“We may not be able to do anything at all, you understand that.”

Movement at her side, and she can feel Aleksis thread his fingers through her fingers, and the growl shuddering through his chest as he replies “I am sure you will think of something, da? Take Cherniy back to Vladivostok. He does not go to Oblivion Bay.”

Sasha’s nails press against his chest, Sasha’s too-loose hair brushes the underside of his chin and Aleksis looks out across the room over her head, not speaking, but warning them,

She will kill you if you do that. She will kill you, and I will help her.

Marshall Hercules Hansen catches his eye and nods.

~X~

They are offered hot water, which they accept, and a stool for the shower, which she rejects with a snarl, choosing instead to press her forehead to the warm slickness of Aleksis’s back, brace her hands on his hips while he braces his against the tile, to lock her knees and will her legs to stop trembling, weak as they are now, until she can’t stop them shaking anymore, and sinks down to her knees with the hot water pounding down her shoulders and Aleksis following her to the floor. They don’t fall. They can’t.

And the nights after that, she tears herself from her husband’s side, and forces herself to walk to the window.  She forces herself, legs coltish and unsteady, to stand.

But they will not give her pins for her hair, and they will not give him a razor for his jaw, and they will not say why.  And they will not say why, even though her hair is much too long now, and the braids won’t hold (he winds it around his fingers, tells her she could smuggle a bomb in all this hair).

And they will not say why, even though his beard drags and itches, and catches on his clothes (she scrapes her hand over his neck, says he looks like he should be out trapping bears on a mountain).

If she were younger maybe, less to lose, farther from knowing how easy (or how hard) it is die, she might sit like this, legs curled sideways, watching the nurse with her fingers playing idly over her husband’s knuckles, and she would say, her voice and her Chinese rusty from disuse, she would say “If I am forced to find a razor myself, and I will find one,” (and she will not say, but they will know she means we found them a bomb, you see what we got them, and you think I will not  find a razor?) “the first thing I use it on will be you, and my husband will hold you down for me.”

But Aleksis’s pushes his knuckles up into her palm, stroking the backs of two fingers over the hollow of her wrist to remind her where they are, and they have not been young for years. So she simply says “Excuse me,” tones clumsy on her tongue, but close enough, she says, “We need a razor.”

“We apologize,” profusely, in fact; it sounds very nearly sincere, how very profoundly sorry they are, “but it’ procedure if there’s a risk that--”

The realization, when it comes, stings like a slap in the face; it hurts, of course, a shallow tinging burn, but what what hurts worse is the insult in it. Her nails bite into Aleksis’s hand.

“Who?” she says.

His name is Doctor Stefan Tabori; he will be seeing you for the next few weeks, and Sasha tips her chin up to meet Aleksis’s mouth. Her lips twist as his press into the corner of her mouth, (and it chafes, all that beard) and he says nothing, but she knows he means We will deal with him.

There is nothing he can do.

~x~

Dr. Stefan Tabori has sharp, pressed shirt-cuffs, and a sharp, pressed, smile, both of which are impossibly, sterilely white. He carries his chin high, because he is a professional, but he shifts very slightly from hip to hip in his chair, because this is highly irregular. He can understand, certainly, the reluctance to be apart after such…after what happened, and he has agreed, for now, to see them jointly (but they will have to be apart eventually, they are too close to co-dependent now). But as he settles into his chair and looks across at the bed, she is sitting sideways in her husband’s lap, knees drawn up, one shoulder pressed to his chest. His arms are wrapped loosely around her waist, and her head is tucked perfectly against his neck, and  Dr. Stefan Tabori can feel more than see the way she watches him coldly from under her husband’s chin. He swallows. Smiles.

“You must be Sasha.”

“Aleksandra,” she murmurs frostily, and he looks down at his chart to find, yes, ‘Lt.A. Kaidanovsky’. He ducks his head apologetically.

“Aleksandra. My mistake.” Stefan smiles again, because it is important to be friendly, and to build a rapport, so he smiles and looks over her shoulder to ask “What is the ‘S’ for, then?”

The man has a voice like a rockslide, not that he’s ever heard a rockslide; topography doesn’t exist in Wichita, Kansas, and he’s a Kansas boy, born and bred, but it’s what Stefan thinks a rockslide would be like. A rockslide which is saying “Aleksis.” He looks down  at his chart, ‘Lt. A Kaidanovsky; Lt. S. Kaidanovsky’ then back up at Lieutenants A and A Kaidanovsky, and neither says a word to him in reply. Aleksis merely rumbles something in Russian into his wife’s hair, making her smile faintly and curl her hand around his wrist.

His watch is so loud, and he has had this watch on his wrist ever since he got his license and it has never, not in all that time, been so loud. Stefan tells himself he knew this would never be easy, tells himself to laugh softly, “Well. You know, bureaucracy,” and to smile and deflect away from all of this with some small question to ease them in, draw them out.

“How’ve you been?”

Wichita, Kansas is painfully, unendingly flat, is miles of dust and dead grass, but somehow, still not as flat or as dry as Aleksandra Kaidanovsky’s voice as she says “Unconscious.”

And Stefan wonders when his watch got so loud.

~x~

After the first time, Aleksis does not speak again. It is only Sasha, always Sasha, curled into her husband’s side, perched in his lap, holding his hands in her hands, soft, gentle postures that belie how hard her eyes are when she looks away from Aleksis, how much her lipstick looks like blood.

Aleksis breathes softly against her neck and says nothing at all.

It is the professional opinion of Dr. Stefan Tabori that this is not helping them at all, to be seeing them together like this, and he says so, again and again, but session after session there they are.

Sasha reaches back over her shoulder when he tries again to draw them out, and tells her that he understands, that this must be difficult, that he can tell it must hurt to lose their Jaeger like that. Her fingers drift through the short hairs bristling on the back of Aleksis’s neck as she says “Have you ever seen one?”

No. No, he hasn’t, and her hand settles on her husband’s neck, palm to his pulse, as she snorts. “Of course you haven’t.”

Or she tucks her cheek against Aleksis’s shoulder when Stefan asks if they’ve given any thought to what they might do when they get out of this place, and her eyes shiver closed. She looks much smaller than she is for a moment, then her eyes are open again, and they flash coldly.

“Are we getting out of here? Nobody has said.” And she presses herself closer to the man beside her, draws her knees up like a child and still looks like she might kill someone, any minute now. Her hair is pinned back, and Aleksis has shaved, and he has no idea where they got the razor.

“No reason not to be positive about it,” he offers.

But she only presses her lips together and narrows her eyes.

Once, one session, Stefan asks them again, because that’s what he’s here for, to help them transition out of Lt. S and A Kaidanovsky, back into Sasha and Aleksis (even if she still refuses to let him call her that, and he never says anything at all), and when he does, Sasha is folded into Aleksis’s lap again.

“It is possible, you know. Raleigh Beckett lived a perfectly ordinary civilian life for five years before he came back.”

And this time, she moves, leaning forward away from him, towards Stefan, hissing “Raleigh Beckett spent five years living out of a duffel bag, moving every two months for the privilege of being treated like a dog on that fucking wall, do not talk to me about Raleigh Beckett!” Then she licks her lips and smiles, thin and cruel. “You don’t approve, do you?” she breathes. “Seeing us like this.”

“It’s…”and Stefan purses his lips, and reminds himself that it’s trust, it’s all about trust, and this is more than he’s been able to get out of them in weeks, “natural to hold back around the people we care about, to keep them from worrying too much.” This might, he thinks, might be it.

It isn’t.

“You think,” she replies, with such perfect disdain that it takes a moment for the insult to set in, like razor too sharp to hurt, “you think I would tell you something I wouldn’t tell him?” And she turns her cheek into her husband’s chest, closes her eyes. “No.”

Silence.

And silence and silence and his too-loud watch, as Stefan finds himself looking almost imploringly at Aleksis; the man’s never supported him, true, but he’s never attacked him, either, and this would be so much easier, like Stefan could just talk to him but for the woman in his lap steadfastly ignoring everything.

He has never seen a landslide, but they’re supposed to happen suddenly, right? Like an avalanche in a movie, all of a sudden there’s this noise, the low, eerily calm growl of Aleksis Kaidanovsky telling him, “This is as alone as you are going to find me. What?”

“What do you think?” Stefan Tabori, with his eight years practicing, with his degrees and articles and his impeccable reputation, can only seem to watch as his own hands float out in a helpless gesture. “What do you think about all of this? You never say anything, so what...what’s going on in your head?”

“I think I love my wife,” he says. “I think talking to you doesn’t help her.”

“But does it help you?”

His eyebrows draw down, arms tightening around his wife, and it seems like it should be impossible for a man his size, for any man, anyone to look so hopelessly confused, so wounded, so utterly betrayed by such a simple question, so much that Stefan finds himself speaking again, without meaning to.

“You’re allowed! You are allowed to disagree with her, you’re allowed to take comfort in different things, Aleksis. You’re not obligated. You’re not her.” You learn to read people in a job like this, reading people is a job like this, and Stefan keeps reading, and keeps talking “And I know it hurts, I know this cannot possibly be easy, but sometimes it does hurt before it gets any easier, or any better. Like cauterizing a wound. You just--”

He may not know a thing about landslides, but Stefan knows storms, can see the wind pick up and the black clouds darken behind the bigger man’s eyes, hear thunder, lightning in the sudden crack of his neck. And then comes the downpour, more words than he has ever heard from Lieutenant Aleksis Kaidanovsky.

“Have you seen that?” he says, jaw tight. “I have.”

There’s a sound you get when the storms are bad, a kind of shudder to tell you just how close the house is to shaking apart. The family across the street used to say that’s what the Kaiju sounded like, but they were from California, you know, and they make up all kinds of things out there.

“I was in the army, and we are...nowhere, this ice field. Zemlya Aleksandry, and we are moving the trucks back to Nagurskoye. Too cold, and a cable snapped, and one of us, he ran to catch it. Vasily. Vasily Albanov. Always running.” A pause, while Aleksis scrubs one hand back and forth across his jaw. “It caught him here,” and he pushes the heel of his hand  into the flesh just below his collarbone, right in the space between his shoulder and his chest, “Tore him open. We were...sévernyj, we were too, too north. Nobody coming, and he is bleeding. We had to stop him bleeding. So we run, get the bandages, but...Luszhin  says ‘No. No, he’ll bleed through them, and it’s too cold. We can’t keep changing them, we need his coat off to change them, he’ll freeze. We have to burn it shut.’ And he says his father is a doctor, and he’s five, six years older than any of us, what do we know? So we make a fire, and take a crowbar from the truck, and he holds it there until it glows. The flat end. Pushes it,” And he pushes his hand into his shoulder and for a moment, he falls silent, fingers winding in the chain around his neck, already twisted around Sasha’s hand. “Like meat. And we put him in the truck, and we went on. They told us later the burn was...infected. Made him too weak. So he died.”

Sasha nuzzles under his chin, the hand not twisted in his necklace stroking slow circles across his chest. Aleksis lowers his nose to her hair, breathing in.

“I like you better than she does,” he concludes. “But you should go.”

~x~

They expect grand gestures. They expect that the break, when it comes, if it comes, will be loud.

But the worst things happen quietly, almost inaudibly, and it is only because he is so close, pressed up to her back with her hair sliding over his throat that he can hear anything at all as she breathes, “We should have drowned. It would’ve been easier.”

As if, after ten years, after the first Mark I fell, after the next and the next until it was only Cherniy left, last of the T-90s; as if, after 10 years of plugging in the wires, knowing that to lose was to die; after fighting for so long; as if, after all that, they could ever just stop.

“No,” Aleksis sighs into her neck, “It wouldn’t”.

But he would find a way. If she wanted to. That is the thing they have been getting wrong all this time, trying to keep them from razors and hairpins; it doesn’t matter. They have been too long fighting, so he would never, and Sasha would never, but if she wanted to…

He would find a way.

Hospitals at night are noisy, machines clicking and beeping and the footsteps down the hall; small sounds, a woman’s thin, ragged exhale of I know, are lost.

But that is the sound he would make, so Aleksis knows that it is there. She knows. And he knows she knows. And she knows he knows she knows, and the human brain is like that, that endless recursion curling in on itself like a breaking wave. Hospital cotton rasps as Sasha turns under his arm, pressing her palm to to the base of his neck. Her eyelashes look too too dark, too wet, and, very faintly, miles away, Aleksis can smell salt. “I think sometimes I hate you,” she whispers.

He can taste it, salt on on his tongue at the corner of her eye when he dips his head to kiss her temple.

“I know.”

His eyes are closed, like hers are closed, but he knows there must be a crooked half-smile tugging at her lips. He would smile.

“We’re not talking to him anymore,” she says.

“I know.”

~x~

“So we’re clear,” and he’s got three cups of coffee, and that’s stopped burning his hands years ago, but three cups of coffee, a headache, and the bottle of peroxide he’s tossing onto the bed, “I didn’t bring you that.”

Then, since he’s down to just the three cups, Tendo Choi raises one to his lips, inhaling sharply as the caffeine hits his tongue (they brewed it too long again, brewed it bitter and almost thick enough to chew, and he’s still drinking it, because Gold help him, he’s an addict and he knows it).

And they’re awake, this time, while he’s choking down cheap coffee, awake enough for Sasha to cross her wrists over the top of the bottle and smirk back at her husband before purring, “Shouldn’t you be worried about your own?” So he’ll forgive them. Just this once.

“No good gel here,” he snaps back, grinning ruefully and jerking his chin up to nudge a fallen lock of hair out of his eyes. “Used to get it sent in from home, but…”

“Your wife designs plasma cannons. I would count you lucky this is the worst she’s chosen to do.”

A sip, and a wince, and Tendo Choi shakes his head. “Don’t remind me.”

There it is, like it always is, her half-fond smile and Aleksis resting his chin on her shoulder, serene and self-satisfied in the knowledge that his wife would never (she would do so much worse, a message he communicates to the bigger man with the tip of one barely-raised eyebrow. Aleksis only grins wider).

“Go home,” Sasha laughs. “LOCCENT will survive. But you…”

His hair is in his face again, lips pursed while he’s working the stale taste around his mouth, wondering if there’s enough sugar in the world to salvage it, and he can’t help but laugh. “Yeah. But she did promise to keep around a couple pictures, so he’ll know what his Dad looked like.”

“Lord forbid he looks too much like you do.”

“Hey!” But they’re awake, so he’ll forgive them. Just this once.

So he’s down to one cup of coffee, so he has enough hands to show them the pictures of his son Allison sends him in lieu of hair gel (he has his father’s hair, his mother’s smile). And he’s preening, like parents do, and they’re laughing, telling him to go home, go home, teach this boy of yours to tie bowties, before your wife ends up keeping you in an ashtray by the door.

“Just remember,” he adds, down to no cups of coffee and a slight trembling in his hands, “I didn’t bring you that.”

“Bring us what? Go home, Choi. You’ve been too long with your screens, you’re seeing things.”

“Must be.” Tendo grins, shaking his head, and he has, he has to get home, because he’s not sure he can make it one more day with his hair like this.

~x~

God bless them, that they don’t tell him how sorry they are, or how brave his boy was, or how they understand how hard this must be. Instead, Sasha merely arches her eyebrows, rolling her shoulder back into Aleksis’s palm with a faint, pained hiss, and says “You look like hell.”

God bless them, that that’s the first honest thing he’s heard in weeks, enough to force a raw, startled laugh from his throat.

“So I do,” Herc chuckles, “But. You’re looking better, though it’d take a damn braver man ‘n I am to say different with him behind you.”

She hums her agreement, carding her fingers through newly-blonde roots. “He has his uses.” And just like that, she isn’t smiling anymore. “Unlike that boy you keep sending to talk to us.”

“Need someone to sign off, to tell us you’re alright, you know that,” he sighs, and grinds a knuckle against the bridge of his nose.

“So make him sign, and send him home,” she replies, unyielding. “They don’t understand. And they won’t and you know that.”

Thing is, he does, every time someone comes up to offer--

praise or consolation or their empty, meaningless thanks, he knows, but there things that have to happen, boxes you have to tick because the points (point, which is him) have to stay fixed. But even so.

“He did come very highly recommended.”

“I am sure he did.”

“Better if you see someone,” and damn them both for that look running between them before Sasha purrs,

“Oh? And who sees you, then? Perhaps they would be better…”

And Hercules Hansen thinks Get you anything; get you into a bloody mess, more like--

But. But even so, and he has enough on his conscience already, and damn them both for knowing it. So he sighs, twists his head sideways in some kind of acquiescence, and tells them he’ll see it gets done.

“Herc.” So he looks up, and wonders when any of them got to be this way, “What are they planning to do?”

He doesn’t know. He doesn’t think anyone else does, either, everyone is running on rumors and running from riots, and they’ve nothing from or of the Weis, so they might be…

“There’s a man,” he says at last, because it’s the safest thing to say, “Wants to come take pictures of you.”

“Are we news again, then?”

Herc shrugs. “Better you than the riots.”

They’ll understand that, bless them, won’t grudge him the cynicism. Sasha hums again, this time considering, then nods.

“Send him,” she says. “But not that boy, send him back to his farm.”

“Man of my word,” he promises, rising from his chair.

“Yes,” Herc hears. “You are. You did...right? By him. You did what was right.”

When he looks back, just like that, Sasha is smiling again, red and crooked. “We are in your debt, Marshall. You need anything, call. I can get you a minor official, maybe? To make things easier. They are not so hard to bribe.”

They salute, both of them, Sasha lazy and wry, Aleksis sharp and precise from old habit.

Get you nothing but trouble, Herc thinks, but what he says is “Lieutenants.” and he thinks he might be smiling.

~x~

There are, in total, 8 of photographs published (there are others, which are not and never will be; they are taken, along with a promise that no trace of them will ever get out, in exchange for the market value of 17 melted rings, a lump of gold nearly the size of a hen’s egg, and a promise that there will be consequences if anything leaks).

1\. She is standing, braced on the sink, with her lipstick in one hand, and her chin jerked up defiantly to bare the mottled red-white of the burn scars dripping like wax down one side of her neck, down onto her collarbone and shoulder. (Kaiju blood, highly acidic, highly toxic, prone to melting synthetic fibers to flesh, and there are the ghosts of wires in those scars). Caught in the moment right before looking up and over her shoulder, you can see someone else reflected dimly behind her, in the dark of her eyes.

2\. His hands are crossed, one over the other like parade rest, and the last two fingers on the left are crooked, and every one of them is scarred, glaring red rings replacing the old gold ones which they had to cut off his hands upon finding them near-burnt on. They are heavy hands, granite in the black-and-white of the picture, and callused and cracked, but the crooked ring finger of his left hand looks...different. There is no wedding band there, but the skin is paler. Soft.

3\. She is standing, back pressed to his chest, holding one of his hands to her hip while her other hand is reaching up and behind to cup the back of his neck, and she is standing as if to say she will kill the one who hurts this man. Slowly.

4\. His hands are crossed, one over the other, arms looped around her shoulders and breathing against her temple. His feet are bare, and somehow tectonic, promising earthquakes if he is ever pulled away from her.

5\. The sheen of sweat on their skin while physical therapists brace their wrists and ankles.

6\. Her fingers in the chain around his neck.

7\. Lit in the pale blue glow of monitors, pretending to sleep, enough eyes showing to know that at least one of them is awake, but everything else; a shoulder, the curve of a jaw and an arm and white-blonde hair, running together into one.

8\. It’s a close shot, tight on their faces, both in profile, and at first it’s impossible to tell what about it is so…

But there’s a line of gold catching on the silhouette of their faces, and at the edge of the frame, the sun is coming up.

 

> 


End file.
